Thursday, January 19, 2017

A hard life - gathering & carrying firewood in the winter; start early in the morning

Cooking and heating needed fuel... and it was very labor intensive for the poor. "In the depth of snow" women and children dragged hacked up stumps, branches or anything the "wood police" allowed.

From: The Rural and Domestic Life of Germany.1842 -

"Such of them as are too poor to lay in a sufficient stock of wood, find
plenty of work in ascending into the mountainous woods, and bringing thence
fuel. It would astonish the English common people to see the intense labour
with which the Germans earn their firewood. In the depth of frost and snow, go
into any of their hills and woods, and there you find them hacking up stumps,
cutting off branches, and gathering, by all means which the official wood
police will allow, boughs, stakes, and pieces of wood, which they convey home
with the most incredible toil and patience.

The women and children carry on
their heads, or drag after them, or wheel in barrows, or trail on sledges,
great bundles of these sticks down the most steep and stony hollow tracks in
the hills. It is one of the characteristics of German scenery, to see all these
roads and steep foot-paths out of these hilly woods harrowed with the
scratching of these perpetually descending bundles. The married women and the
smart country damsels of England would stand aghast at meeting such objects of
slavery, as they would call it, as we meet here continually—women, old and
young, dragging and toiling under these bundles in the severity of winter or
the intense heat of summer…

There is not an hour of that year in which they do not find unceasing
occupation. In the depth of winter, when the weather permits them by any means
to get out of doors, they are always finding something to do. Of their in-door
employments we shall speak elsewhere. They carry out their manure to their
lands while the frost is in them. If there is not frost, they are busy cleaning
ditches, and felling old fruit-trees, or such as do not bear well.

Early hours and simple living distinguish the
Germans. Three meals a-day are the usual order. The common people are
astir extremely early, especially in summer, when wagons and carriages
begin to roll about at two o'clock; and after that time, every hour
becomes more lively with the country people proceeding to the town with
articles for market. The cooks and good housewives are off to market to
make their purchases for the day at five and six o'clock.

The peasant
girls, of course, before that hour, are going along in streams, with
their tubs or baskets on their heads, full of vegetables, eggs, milk,
fruit, etc. "